Default Markdown file extension statistics

Just read an excellent post by Hilton Lipschitz about Markdown file extensions, where he makes the case for using .markdown, and I couldn’t agree more! WikiPack proudly uses a default Markdown file extension of .markdown, but gives you the freedom of choosing a different extension if you like.

I takes no more effort on our part to use longer, descriptive file extensions, and there are benefits such as being able to associate .markdown files with a different editor to other more generic text formats.

To me, it’s a no brainer, but I’ve seen similar issues manifest themselves in programming, where some developers lean towards shortened, abbreviated, often cryptic variable & method names. Why? Code editors these days have this great new thing called “automatic code completion”, so cutting down on typing is a non-issue as it’s mainly abstracted away from you. Similarly, once you create a file, you never need to type it’s file extension again, if ever.

WikiPack stats

Since introducing the ability to choose a default Markdown file extension to WikiPack, users have gone with the following:

Extension	%
.markdown	52.6
.md	31.6
.txt	15.8

Which Markdown file extension do you use?

Update 2012-05-23

The latest statistics from WikiPack users as of May 2012 shows a definite shift towards .markdown being the de facto standard: